derous Afghan knife, whose triangular two-foot blade has disfigured
too many British uniforms.

In peaceful contrast to these trophies were one or two rough sketches
of the mountain regions beyond Kashmir; desolate stretches of glacier
and moraine, or groups of stately peaks, the colouring washed in with a
singular sureness of touch. There were also maps, finely executed by
hand, of Thibet and Central Asia. To these fresh names and markings
were added, from time to time, with a thrill of satisfaction only to be
gauged by the man for whom the waste places of earth are a goodly
heritage, and who would sooner contribute a new name to the world's
atlas than rule a kingdom. Higher up the twenty-foot walls, heads of
sambhur, markor, and the lesser deer of the Himalayas showed dimly in
the light of one lowered lamp. Skins of bear and leopard, and one or
two costly Persian prayer-rugs, partially hid the groundwork of dusty
matting, taken over with the bungalow from its former occupant, and in
places revealing the stone floor beneath. The broad mantel-shelf was
given over to books, a motley crowd in divers stages of dilapidation.
'The Master of Ballantrae' shouldered 'The Queen's Regulations,' one
would fancy with a swaggering hint of scorn; a battered copy of the
'Pilgrim's Progress' stood resignedly between Bogle's 'Mission to
Thibet' and a technical handbook on Topography, the whole row being
propped into position at one end by a great brown tobacco-jar, and at
the other by a bronze image of the Buddha in cross-legged meditation--a
memento of Lenox's latest expedition to Thibet.

The solitary lamp, its green shade set at a rakish angle, stood upon a
spacious writing-table, strewn with closely written sheets of foolscap,
pens, pencils, pipes, and books of reference, half a dozen of these
last being piled on the floor, close to the writer's chair. It was the
table of a man who leaves his work reluctantly, leaves it in such a
fashion that he can take it up again exactly where he left off, without
wasting precious time upon preliminaries.

On Lenox's bare deck-lounge a bull terrier, of powerful build and
uncompromising ugliness, slept soundly, nose to tail, and on one of the
costly prayer-rugs his Pathan bearer slept also. The deep, even
breathing of dog and man formed a murmurous duet in the twilight
stillness.

All these things Max Richardson noted, with a twinkle of amusement in
his blue eyes. Every detail of the r